FREEDOM SUMMER REGISTRATION
The black residents were intimated by the unfair voter registration testing process, and they feared violence, the risk of being fired and even death. The so-called "Freedom Summer," which happened 50 years ago, was a time of fear. With that mindset, Nelson's Firelight Media team ended up with 5,000 photos in its database. "If you see something that you like, no matter who you are on the team, let us know it's there and that it exists," he asserts. Communication and the constant effort of discovering new material is a priority for his films. "We start looking for audio and footage from the first day of production, and this production took a year and a half," he says. Nelson shares the credit for finding those rare photos and other material with his team. The film layers less familiar stories with more known ones and masterfully weaves together storylines using audio conversations, archival photos, illustrations, inspiring interviews with dynamic subjects, original letters read on camera, and freedom songs. "You can't put in nearly as much detail and tell all of the stories you can tell in a book," Nelson explains. Based very loosely on the book by writer/historian Bruce Watson entitled Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy, the film is packed with many surprising stories. The beauty of Nelson's latest film, Freedom Summer, is his ability to craft an engaging story. Masterfully crafting films through interviews, archival footage and audio recordings, Nelson delves deep into lives and events that history books often neglect. "I just fell into a niche of doing historical documentaries and I became known for it," he says. But Nelson did not intentionally focus on making this type of film. Whether the film is The Murder of Emmett Till, Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple or Freedom Riders, viewers gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of the given period in history. He does an impeccable job capturing personal experiences and sentiments of a particular era.
Learn more and purchase tickets.Īward-winning filmmaker and MacArthur "genius" Fellow Stanley Nelson is known for making historic documentary films. Editor’s Note: On October 1 at the Lakeside Theater in Oakland, IDA will present a special Bay Area edition of its Conversation Series, featuring The Black Panthers director Stanley Nelson talking with Orlando Bagwell, director of the Documentary Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
0 kommentar(er)
